Artist building personal spaces

Updated 8:05 pm, Tuesday, February 5, 2013

"Barcelona" was inspired by a sculpture by Georg Kolbe that artist John Webb saw on a trip to Spain.

"Barcelona" was inspired by a sculpture by Georg Kolbe that artist John Webb saw on a trip to Spain.

Photo: Courtesy John Webb

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"Find the River," a sculpture from John Webb's "Organic Spaces" series, is composed of subtly curving and twisting tubes held together by gravity.

"Find the River," a sculpture from John Webb's "Organic Spaces" series, is composed of subtly curving and twisting tubes held together by gravity.

Photo: Courtesy John Webb

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"Twelve Part Chair," made from a sheet of baltic birch plywood, is made of interlocking parts.

"Twelve Part Chair," made from a sheet of baltic birch plywood, is made of interlocking parts.

Photo: Courtesy John Webb

Artist building personal spaces

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John Webb was enjoying the cool of the Guadalupe River on a hot day when he felt something unusual underfoot.

He reached down and pulled a palm-sized gear from the silty river bed.

“I thought it was kind of cool, and I just held on to it, appreciated it for its form,” says the artist and architect.

A few days later, he found a similar part outside his home, and, well, “the gears in my head started turning,” he says.

Pieces from “Bodies of Work,” a series of sculptures inspired by industrial age machinery, along with sculpture from other series and modern furniture designed by Webb are currently on exhibit at Gallery Nord. Abstract paintings by Sandy Whitby and Elizabeth Williams also are on display.

A licensed architect who teaches at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Webb earned a master of fine arts degree in studio art with an emphasis in sculpture from UTSA last year.

As art forms, architecture and sculpture “relate closely to each other,” he says. “Architecture can be very sculptural, and for me, the similarity is most evident in the concept — that there's an idea that informs the development of the design of a building and there's an idea that informs the development of a piece of sculpture, and both are things that are built.”

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One important distinction, however, is that Webb — and Webb alone — makes the sculpture.

“The great thing about sculpture is I get to build it, and there's no compromise,” he says. “It comes out exactly as I want it to be.”

Pieces from “Bodies of Work” juxtapose moving gears and pulleys, all made out of Baltic birch plywood, with body parts, the idea being that the machines were designed in many ways to mimic some of the functions of human hands, arms and legs — scooping, digging, pressing, pounding, grinding — on a bigger, more efficient scale.

“It's just obvious when you look at a machine like that, that you understand it,” Webb says.

Other works in the show are from his “Organic Spaces” series — elegant compositions of open tubelike structures, also made of Baltic birch plywood. “Find the River” is an interlocking stack of geometric noodles. It looks like it would be irresistible to a cat, and indeed proved so to Webb's own, who brought it crashing down one evening.

Most of the works in the series “are curvilinear in their shapes rather than cubic or rectilinear, and so they're sort of organic,” Webb says. “I appreciate that kind of space. I think it's kind of unique and we don't get enough of those kinds of spaces in the world.”

The ideas behind both series meet in “Barcelona,” a piece inspired by a sculpture by Georg Kolbe. The figure of a female nude who appears poised to dive into a pool of water is defined by leather straps wrapped around the visible framework.

“I had been working on this series — 'Bodies of Work' — with the human form and the gears, and thought it would be interesting to challenge myself with that pose, but wanted to evolve a little bit, too,” Webb says. “I like when sculpture is sort of open on the inside — open-form sculpture, rather than just a solid thing which I sort of define more as a statue. It's all about space to me, and so when space sort of leaks in and leaks out, you can see inside and imagine the inside. That's the type of sculpture I like best.”

The fusion between Webb's architectural work and his sculpture is perhaps most evident in his furniture — clean, utilitarian works such as “Twelve Parts Chair,” a deceptively simple looking piece made of interlocking wooden parts. The piece is assembled like a puzzle without a single nail, screw or dab of glue to keep it together.

“PSC1” (Plate Steel Chair 1) was cut from a single sheet of metal and looks as though it would fold flat again.

The furniture is “maybe even a mediator between sculpture and architecture,” Webb says. “Then it has that little added aspect of being functional, but sculpture that's also functional, and architecture is a functional art, so they're all just really sort of interrelated. I don't think I'm one or the other in terms of being a sculptor or an architect, but I'm sort of all those things.”

Works by John Webb, Sandy Whitby and Elizabeth Williams are on display through March 2 at Gallery Nord, 2009 NW Military Highway. Call 210-348-0088.